


The Prairie is Parched

by Vana



Category: Jo's Boys - Louisa May Alcott, Little Men - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: But I guess I am now, First Kiss, First Time, Here to ruin Alcott for you, I like these tags, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension, eventually..., i'm not even in this fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-05 18:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13393302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: Where it's Nat keeping Dan's spirit alive out there in the West.





	1. The Cactus Blossoms

**Author's Note:**

> New fandom who dis? I've been reading Alcott while recovering from a pretty bad illness and decided to add my little bit to Dan/Nat. Let me introduce them:
> 
> Dan is a stubborn, harsh, kind of iron-willed dude who doesn't say much but grew up rough and will never really be tamed. Dan says what he thinks and it gets him in trouble half the time. But when he's in his element, he's a natural leader, and he loves the natural world.
> 
> Nat is his faithful, _so loyal_ friend, always second fiddle (he also plays the fiddle) and is often the only one who will speak up for Dan's honor, as well as the only one Dan will stand up for -- ever.
> 
> \--
> 
> Does any of this ring a bell?

_Massachusetts_

In the civilized Northeast rivers and manicured fields, even among the wild animals, there was a politesse that made Dan ill at ease. The wildlife was only half as wild as he felt inside, the plants calm and trembling in the slightest breeze. It was in Massachusetts that he lost his parents before he ever knew them. Massachusetts had hurt him grievously and he often had nothing else to blame but the humid air, the lush valleys, the cotton cloud sky.

Still he couldn't deny that the place did him much good, eventually. He found brotherhood there on the dirty ends of the small town streets, found a pretty girl or two to kiss and leave, found a mother and father who grew to love him as their own, found fire, found forgiveness, found a forever home. 

And he found Nat. 

Nat, whose very New Englandness shone out among the dark alleys like the light his music brought to silent, ashy places. Nat, whose fear and timidity shadowed him from everyone, even his own father. Nat, whom no one long remembered. _Was there a boy?_ the street audience asked themselves, once they had tossed their few coins into the violin case and left. _Or did we only imagine him?_

But Dan remembered him, remembered his voice and his high, pale forehead, his stammering thanks to the kindnesses that seemed to be impelled from Dan through no intent of his own. And when he last saw Nat, he had dared to clasp the white thin hand until the last, and Nat had held it like a lifeline and whispered, "I'm going to Plumfield ... it's where I'll live, I hope. Plumfield, remember, Dan. Come when you can. I'll be there waiting for you."

He came to Plumfield, and he set the place afire both figuratively and literally. He conquered the hearts of the loving Bhaers in spite of himself and to his own infinite wonder. And he was with Nat all the time, month after minute, hours to years, Nat's quiet voice and his sumptuous music the daily song in Dan's ears, Nat's trusting, often ghostlike presence his surprisingly solid anchor through the tumult of the times.

But he couldn't stay forever. The West beckoned Dan. Nat was in school yet; leaving would set him back to an extent that Dan could not permit. He hushed Nat's protestations, half desperate, half decisive. "I'll come back for you, Nat," he said, in a mirror image of the promise Nat had made him in the smoke-smeared, grease-lit alley the day he whispered "Plumfield." Nat knew he would keep his promise. And the sea called, wild and windblown, tides cresting and breaking, never ceasing.

_California_

Life seemed a series of different ways of saying goodbye to Nat -- some gruff, some distracted, some wordless with black eyes speaking eloquent silences into pale ones. The last time was the most difficult because he did not know when he'd be back. God, he had crushed Nat in his arms then, pressed his lips to the top of Nat's head and hoped against hope that Nat didn't notice. His voice failed him when he said "Goodbye, old chap," trying for casual, succeeding at broken, turning away abruptly to hoist his valise into the carriage that would take him to the train and he almost couldn't do it. Almost wept in the train cars passing through Pittsburgh -- the brave boy who never cried at anything save when Mother Bhaer had welcomed him back home when he was barely fifteen -- the young man who feared nothing and loved the earth. He gave himself a violent mental shake. He stared out the window until the blur in his vision could have been only the onrushing scenery. But "Nat," he whispered as he dropped his head against the window to sleep, finally exhausted with the effort of it all. And _Dan_ he could almost hear back. 

The West cleared his mind and he thrived. The gold fields and the shantytowns were bustling with young men and women, some of whom took a look at Dan's straight back, broad shoulders, flashing black eyes and windswept hair and offered him their beds for the night. Dan declined even when one young thing reminded him so much of Nat that he ached. Could he just close his eyes and imagine ... but no. He could never take Nat to bed so he would die unspoilt -- he could almost laugh -- who could think of untameable firebrand Dan Kean dying a virgin? And yet ... and yet. It would be a great joke someday, after he was in his tomb. 

In Sacramento there was some trouble; in San Francisco, even more. Dan could never let a cheat by him somehow. It was as though every lying sneak was Ned Barker or Jack Ford, stealing from, threatening, and harassing those he loved best. It was as though every defenseless youngster taken in by a cheat was his own Nat. When he saw it happening, his lungs seemed to fill with fire, his head pounded, and he could no longer keep back the flood of anger. Too often he fought and too often won. He made himself few friends in those silver cities and he longed to be back on a horse, out in the wild, away from the mottled scowls and broken glass, away from the shopping and swearing and useless talk. Dan took himself away as soon as he could. 

_Montana_

The people of Montana were blessedly quiet, as quiet as the juniper and the silent coyote. Dan felt as though he had found a second family there, and in his infinite quest for justice, he found a foe against which he could set his shoulder -- the imperious U.S. government, the soldiers who would march these peaceable tribes from pillar to post at their own whim. Dan gave them as much of his own money as he could; he worked with them, fought with them and taught them what he knew, which was a fraction of what they gave and taught him. On his bedroll under the sky where the stars were bright as lantern flame, Dan thought he could be forever happy here, if only missing Nat did not itch at him like a mosquito. He tried to forget. Nat was with Daisy; Nat was where he belonged in the great city; Nat was petted and pleased by all those surrounding him. Nat had surely forgotten him by now. 

The young man he had last seen at sixteen plagued his dreams, which should have been full of the arroyo and the cactus and the springtime bluebells. But no, instead it was Nat, always Nat, hot and trembling under Dan's commanding hands, Nat arching up catlike to meet Dan's searching lips, Nat dripping and unafraid and laughing in a Plumfield meadow after a dip in the lazy blue river, his violin stood against a tree. Dan would awake with his mind fogged and confused and his body on fire. 

He watched the young women of the tribe, who smiled shyly back at him. He imagined their lithe bodies, their soft brown breasts in his hands, their long black hair entwined around him. They were pleasant thoughts, thoughts to sigh and make believe on. He put himself to sleep dreaming of the girls. But he always awoke burning for Nat.

It had been two years. Nat was eighteen now, maybe nineteen. Dan could no longer wait and guess and wait some more. It was time to go back.


	2. A Study in Charcoal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan comes home to Plumfield, for a little while.

_Plumfield_

Little Teddy, all arms and legs at thirteen and insisting on being called Ted now, flung himself bodily onto Dan at the train station the way he had since he was two years old and insisted on spending every possible moment in the company of “my Danny.” Besides Nat, little Teddy was his most faithful companion and defender and Dan loved the child with all the rugged affection in his heart. 

“By Golly! you look like a mountain man, Dan,” said Ted, affecting the speech of the older students. Dan just smiled fondly and ruffled the auburn hair. 

“How are all the boys getting along?” he asked while the horses and carriage trod the familiar path over the rolling meadows toward Plumfield. 

“Hardly boys now,” laughed the coachman. “They’re men, even down to little Ted here.”

“That’s right,” said Ted, puffing out his chest. “Every man of us hale and hearty. Demi is getting along tiptop. Tom is still in as many scrapes as ever but hasn’t managed to kill himself yet. Even Nat doesn’t look like a rail any more and he stands up straight. Uncle is sending him to study in Germany in the fall, you know—”

Teddy was still talking, but Dan heard nothing but the pounding of blood in his head. The green countryside faded around the edges to a black blur. Germany. In the fall. Dan’s hand clenched around the carriage’s railing; he felt the cool metal getting warm under his suddenly sweaty palm. Germany. 

Bless him, Ted never noticed his companion’s discomfiture. Dan came back to himself as Teddy was detailing a recent exploit of his cousin Josie’s. “And she dived down three times to get that lady’s necklace just so she could impress her enough for acting lessons …” Ted shook his head in disgust. “Not as though she’d do it for the rest of us.”

“And little Bess? Is she still well?” 

Ted gave him a strange look. “I told you about Bess a minute ago. She’s sculpting all the day long, hardly ever leaves her studio.”

“Of course,” said Dan, scrubbing a hand over his face. “The trip tired me out more than I thought.”

Mrs. Jo was first to greet him at Plumfield’s front door. She looked him over and pronounced him in fine fettle, though he had neither shaven nor cut his hair in his rush to get back as soon as possible. Once he had stared up at the smoke rising from the dying campfire and twisting off into the black night, and made up his mind to come home, nothing — not barbers nor late trains nor sudden, pounding rains all across the northern states — could stop him. The fire from the night and all the nights before it was in his head, behind his eyes, urging him to go. 

And then there was Nat right behind her. Mrs. Jo slid out of Dan’s vision along with everyone and everything else that was not the tall young man who appeared in the doorway. Nat was at the door — he was across the threshold — he was at the carriage, offering Dan his hand to help him down. Dan’s chest was an inferno, his eyes clouded with hunger, as he took the cold, slim hand and somehow climbed down onto solid ground.

“I didn’t expect you until the week’s end,” said Nat, “how did you get here so quickly, you must have had hardly any time to change stations…” His voice slipped into the register Dan remembered as Nat fluttered about him, catching hold of his suitcase and then setting it down again, and it dawned on Dan suddenly that Nat was nervous, even jumpy. This would not do.

“I had enough time,” he said, and when he spoke, Nat stilled entirely and focused his shaky gaze on Dan’s face. Dan swallowed hard and licked his dry lips unconsciously. “I just wanted to get here.”

 

_Reeds_

The quiet rush of the little brook carried up to the willow tree, into whose branches Dan could still fit himself, with a little effort. 

“You’ve grown so …” Nat waved vaguely, as if trying to brush away cobwebs to find the right word, hidden in a corner somewhere. Dan waited. “So much older,” Nat finished, but it was clear he was dissatisfied with that, and Dan wasn’t sure if he himself was or wasn’t. Would it help for Nat to think of him as older or would that push him too far out of reach?

“It ages you, I guess,” Dan said.

“What does? What happened out there?”

Dan closed his eyes. Sweetgrass, black oil on the walls of the ore mines, wild ponies and wilder men, smoke at the edges of broad, rushing rivers. Blood on the papered walls, faded footprints in the ashes of the campfires, muttered threats through whiskey breath. What _hadn’t_ happened out there? 

“Don’t matter,” he said, wanting to dust it all off him, even the bluebells, even the shy girls. If he could he would shed the West from him like a rattlesnake leaving behind its old skin, and emerge clean and tender and shining in the misty Massachusetts sunlight for Nat. “Just do me a favor, old boy. Play me a tune or two while I rest.”

Nat cast him a strange, thoughtful look. But “All right, Dan,” was all he said as he lifted his fiddle from its case. Every time Nat said his name Dan collected the sound to keep with him, like a rare mineral, shining in his palm and smooth in his fevered mind. _Say it again_ , he almost asked, but Nat was warming up now, drawing his bow along the shimmering strings and plucking them with his long fingers, trying to resolve on a tune. 

He played a piece Dan had not heard since many years before he left for the West. It sang of home and wholesomeness and all things good and pure. As it went on, it sang of the choked silences in the night, of demons unsleeping, of violent dawns. Then it cried for innocence adrift, dreams fragmented, the fading memory of sunshine, the dry rustle of homesickness. It sang of white pages unwritten and a stain of spilt ink, musical notes blurred under a milky glass, joy tempered and annealed. It sang of Nat. 

The music faded. Dan suddenly knew he didn’t belong here, he was bad luck, he had always been bad luck and he would never be worthy to keep the company of this pale angel who could make the blue skies sing and the dusk weep. He would burn up to ashes before he would allow himself to corrupt such a creature. 

Dan stumbled from the branch, heedless, blinded. “Thank you, Nat,” he gritted out. Before Nat could say a word — because he knew that even one would keep him here forever — Dan was gone. That crackling shell of snakeskin was his home after all. All he could ever do for Nat would be to shame him and hurt him, leaving him splintered and unwound, out of tune, degraded. Germany, indeed, would be far better. “Thank you,” again, broken, and then he was gone.


	3. Thrown to the Dogs

_Colorado_

Once again the vast prairies blurred against the sweat-smeared glass of the train windows; once again the sun rose and set and rose again over the golden land and red desert. Dan hardly saw it. He was fleeing now; fleeing a vain love, a dream grasped and almost held and then let go — the slips of the little boat he might have clung to sailing away into the distance —to Germany, to goodness. It was too hard to bear, Dan thought, but he had borne worse — perhaps.

In the fall in California, Dan met Blair, a hapless young farmer who reminded him just enough of Nat that Dan could not help shadowing him — not in the way he would have loved to be by Nat’s side but to protect the boy, to keep him from harm in this wild place. Blair was going to Kansas to join his brothers on the farm. 

He was not, after all, so much like Nat as he had seemed. Nat, Dan thought ruefully, had a better head on his shoulders, for all his daydreams. Nat would never have gotten himself into such a scrape, with gamblers and crooks and men who flashed their pistols in the night like semaphores. 

In the end, it was Dan who paid the price. His temper flared when one brigand threatened Blair and Dan struck him, sending him reeling to the floor; the criminal bled out and died; the courtroom found Dan guilty. To the dark hold Dan was taken, shackled, and confined. One year was the sentence. One year in Colorado, with the mountains just out of reach; one year to never hear another friendly voice; one year to die in, for Dan felt sure he would die in this cramped and narrow place, without the sky or the water or the grim sands. 

Somehow the months passed by. Dan forgot the chirping of birds, forgot the beauty of a butterfly wing, forgot the warmth of the sunshine on his face. He despaired and almost wept when he knew he had forgotten even the sound of Nat’s fiddle — the sound he had hoped would sing him to his last slumber. 

He tried to remember. Sometimes at the least expected times — bending over his work in the prison's brush shop, the work his only purpose now — a fragment of the tune Nat had played by the willow would come back to him, humming teasingly past his consciousness like the buzz of a wayward bee. He would look up, hoping for more, yet fearing he would remember it all and fall apart, collapse like a child and cry out like a beaten man. Relief and rage warred within him when he couldn't recall the rest of the song. And soon even his fevered dreams of Nat diminished and disappeared, whirling off into the dust like lazy tumbleweeds, crushed into the roadside dirt and never to be seen again.

Black day followed frozen night until at last he had served out his time and was free to go. He stood blinking in the empty sunshine, shorn, friendless, adrift, with nowhere to go. Plumfield would be forbidden to him now: they could not know, they must not know. And Nat — he was lost to Dan now, like all his friends, like all his hopes. All he had was Montana and the high prairies, the chalk-dry land and soundless sky. It would be enough. It had to be enough.

 

_Leipzig_

It couldn’t be only homesickness, just apprehension in a faraway place that woke Nat with the trembling horrors in October, in November, in December. The nightmares did not strike with any regularity, but rather waylaid him at random no matter how much he tried to exhaust himself with work and music and aimless, undetermined rambles around the cobblestone city. Some nights after playing the violin for hours — six hours, ten hours — until his calloused fingers were raw and bleeding and his head was pounding, Nat would fall unconscious into his bed, only to wake a few hours later screaming in his dreams, so violently that he was sure he had wakened his fellow boarders. But no one ever came, and Nat, in the dim candlelight, was not sure what he had imagined and what was real. Everything was possible and impossible in the liminal hours after the night terrors; the shadow of the flame flickered against the wall as Nat lay shivering in bed under goosedown covers and quilts, blinking away the bloody visions, trying to shake off the panic and dread. 

For months this went on and the only thing Nat could find to still the terrors was the thick, heady German beer. If he quaffed enough of it starting at supper, and put his violin firmly away before starting in on it, he could sometimes be sure of a full night’s sleep without being disturbed by visions and hollow voices — voices that sounded like the voice of one he loved best, howling anguished under a black sky, searching in vain for stars Nat did not know. 

Even dulled by drink, Nat missed Dan with a fierceness that surprised him. He always knew he would miss him when he went to Germany and Dan went back West. The step of the seasons, the whirl of the school year had kept him busy enough during Dan’s first and second years away, while Nat finished at Plumfield, that the lost sensation was blunted. Nat’s family was there, after all — Mrs. Jo and Uncle Laurie and Uncle Fritz and Demi and Daisy and Tom and little Teddy and the rest. It was easier to forget about Dan, at least for hours at a time, the first time he went away.

Then his friend had come back, all flashing black eyes and long hair and beard and salt and dust. Nat had hardly known what to do, what to say, where to look. He could hardly breathe when he saw the way Dan was looking at him. And when he had played a song he thought could speak his heart to Dan the way his voice never could, it had only gone all wrong, and Dan had fled with scarcely a word. Nat was bereft, on his way to a foreign land where he knew no one, with the confusion of Dan’s too-brief visit still whirling in his mind. 

So Nat drank and played billiards and went to balls and concerts, and drank some more, to allay his melancholy and to fend off the nightmares that plagued him. On New Year’s Eve, addled as he was, he came home to a pile of bills he could not pay, invitations he could not afford to accept, and a letter from home ... from Plumfield. He lay in bed unable to sleep, hot tears aching behind his dry eyes, knowing the worst would come that night. And it did. The horrors descended on him almost before he was asleep, crawling up the walls, reaching into his soul and clawing at it blindly, tearing at him. Too stupefied to light a taper, Nat lay in the blackness and conjured up the only vision that could keep him from going completely insensible, the vision he had never allowed himself to have or admitted that he wanted to have: Dan, with his strong arms around Nat, holding him protectively under a gentle rain of willow leaves; Dan in the half-light, his eyes closed, while Nat and the fiddle played their best; Dan sweat-soaked, exhausted, falling into Nat’s embrace and with his mouth, open and welcome, against Nat’s collarbone. Nat fought fire with fire all that night and in the morning he was battle-worn and weary, but newly imbued with a resolve he could not name.

The next day he moved back out of his opulent apartments, conveyed his regrets to his well-off friends, and took a job teaching to pay back his debts. The months would pass in the cool springtime city whether he wasted them or not, and then he would go home — home, to Dan and destiny.


	4. Reparations

_Dakota Territory_

The mine had closed in too fast for the workers to get out. Twenty miners doomed to choke black dust in their final, desperate breaths. Twenty men to scream soundlessly. Twenty wives to mourn, and twenty or more children to grow up, forgetting their fathers more each day, hating the dark hot underground, some of them not even knowing why.

But not if Dan could help it. He acted on instinct, finding the passage he alone was left to know, working tirelessly with his shovel that threw wet and heavy dirt behind him all the way, some said miles down into the mine shaft where the men were hopelessly trapped. It was Dan who led them all back and was the last out before the ground finally gave way. It was Dan who was almost killed himself. “A suicide run,” witnesses said, shaking their heads as the rescuer lay, unconscious, on a white cot in a makeshift infirmary.

Twenty lives he had saved, to pay twenty times over for the one he had taken. Blackness swallowed him and he slept, mercifully, while the doctors from the city said he would surely not wake.

Yet he did wake, days later; he was too strong to die that way. He woke and slept feverishly in one family’s large house; he raved in his dreams and cried out for Nat. When Uncle Laurie arrived on the scene, he heard Dan call the first time — “Nat, come quick, I need you” from the weak voice on the wet pillow — and tears filled his eyes. He remembered Damon and Pythias, remembered Nat imploring him and Mrs. Jo to give Dan another chance, remembered Dan’s indistinct, shadowed gratitude. There had always been something in the firebrand that only gentle Nat could ever see. Laurie sent word to Germany that the student was to come — at once. 

—

Nat stood frozen in the doorway. Laurie worried he might faint, with the strain of his long trip and the shock of seeing his old friend thus. But then, with a strength and purpose Laurie had rarely seen in anyone, Nat squared his bent shoulders and approached the sickbed. 

He did not take Dan’s hand as Laurie had expected. Instead, to Laurie's shock, he sank down in the chair beside the bed and bent to lie his head on Dan’s hollowed chest, his hand on Dan’s face. An expectant silence filled the room as the minutes passed with the two of them unmoving, Laurie speechless, the sun sinking below the upstairs windowsill.

Laurie waited for Nat to rise, ready to make bright conversation and try to lift the gloom of the dimming chamber. But when he saw Dan lift his ill-used arms to enfold Nat in them, and one of Dan’s hands slide down to the small of Nat’s back, where it rested for long moments — and how Nat shuddered visibly then, and the muffled murmur he breathed into Dan’s shirt — Laurie’s eyes widened in sudden understanding. He made his excuses to leave, knowing neither of the other two heard; he retreated, closing the door behind him.

—

The early evening passed for Dan and Nat in a soft haze. They were undisturbed for hours, not knowing Laurie had given his orders. Even the medicine, even the meals were held at the door; Nat’s first touch healed Dan more than any draught, and his quiet presence left him more sated than any food. 

Dan was the first to break the silence. His voice was hoarse with disuse. “Don’t know how you got here so fast,” and then a violent fit of coughing shook him.

“Please don’t tire yourself,” said Nat, and his voice was so fond and full that Dan lay back and floated on it, content to listen. “I took the first train to Amsterdam and sailed for New York. Then a train to Saint Paul, and one to Mandan until a lumber wagon picked me up and brought me here. Uncle Laurie saw to it all. I hardly knew where I was or how long it took; only — to get back to you …”

His speech broke then and Dan, with his eyes shut and his hand tight in Nat’s, shattered a little with it. To hear him, so close and quiet, allowing as how he had been thinking about Dan — while Dan thought he’d always known it, it was still a surprise, a shock that went to his core. Daringly, he drew one rough finger down Nat’s bent back — he had wanted to do that for so long and there was nothing else now, just the two of them in the stillness, with the hush of the future between them.

Nat shivered violently, then seemed to sink toward him, weightless and breathless. But when he wrapped his hand around the back of Dan’s head to grasp him and bring him close, Dan wondered why he had ever considered Nat hesitant or unsteady. Nat had him entirely at his mercy now, with his gentle touch and his nearness and the strange shine in his eyes. 

Although Dan felt completely at peace, his very veins still pulsed with expectation. The flame inside him that had gone dormant sparked almost imperceptibly, bringing a heavy and feverish color to his gaunt cheeks. He had never thought this happiness was possible, and now— _Oh, God._

“Nat, stop,” he growled. He had forgotten, for those twinkling moments of bliss when Nat held him close, what he was. A killer, a jailbird, a stain on decent society. Never to be Nat’s, never to even touch him without shame — now more than ever.

“Dan?” Nat’s gaze was unfocused, his lips light and inviting, the sides of his neck all pink and aglow. 

“I said stop.” The words cost Dan the pain he hadn’t been awake to know after the accident. They choked him more thickly than the coal dust and broke him as forcefully as the crush of the mine shaft. “You don’t know what I’ve done — you have no idea… Just go, Nat.”

He threw his arm over his eyes, awaiting the fading footsteps, the click of the door. The solemn return of Laurie and the nurse, the food he would have to try to eat for gratitude’s sake, the eventual flight to the plains, empty now: all goodness and light barred from him, from now until the day he died.

Mrs. Jo liked to say that Nat was the only one of her boys who had never, to her knowledge, lost his temper. It was what had endeared him to bookish Demi and dear Daisy, to gentle Meg and amicable Uncle Fritz. Nat, from the day he had arrived poor and sick, had been hurt, he’d despaired, even wept. He had never been angry.

But he was angry now. He seized Dan’s hand and tore it away from his eyes, forcing him to look at Nat’s darkened face — so stormy it was as if Dan could feel the room growing cold and electric. Dan could not keep his eyes off Nat as he partly shouted, partly spat out words of fury, with a force that Dan had never — never! — imagined his friend had the capacity to hold inside himself.

“I came halfway across the _world_ to you,” Nat said, his voice fraught with anguish and rage. “I dreamt of you, every _night_ I dreamt of you in Leipzig until I had to drink enough to forget you, and then when the nightmares came — all the time, Dan, I knew I heard you crying out in the dark — when they came, the only thing that comforted me was thinking of you, of _this_! Finally being with you, even if you were dying — even if you had already died I would have held your body until they dragged me away.” 

Nat’s breath was shallower than Dan’s own now, but he was inexorable, still holding Dan’s wrist where he had wrenched it, his knuckles digging into Dan’s flesh. Dan lay stunned and inarticulate. 

“If you don’t think all I _ever_ waited for, since I knew what waiting meant, was to stay near you—! I don’t _care_ what you did! I never have cared for anything but to be at your side. You called out for me in your fever, you touched me like … like you cared for me, and then you tell me to leave! You’re a God-damned fool, Dan Kean. And I’ll go, if you want. But not before—” and, almost out of breath and still furious and damp with sweat, he leaned down to Dan and kissed him, hard, unforgiving, dry lips against Dan’s. The fire blazed up again, so blistering hot this time that Dan thought he would burn up from it.

“Nat,” Dan gasped when he could breathe. When had his own voice become so faint? The sound of it seemed to frighten Nat out of his anger and he was just Nat again, his blue eyes wide with remorse. 

“Oh! … I’m … I’m so sorry,” Nat faltered, starting to pull away.

“Don’t,” said Dan, twisting his hand out of Nat’s grip but only to hold on, to draw him closer. Every inch of his tortured skin strained toward Nat, but it was more than that now — it was the pounding of his heart, the singing of his nerves, the feeling of aliveness that he had not had since that afternoon in the willow tree. Nat was right. He was a fool — a twice-damned fool if he let him get away. Blood had been spilled in the service of redemption long before, and Dan would not, or could not, carry out the sentence of a slow death twice.


	5. And Both Shall Row

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here comes the sexy part!

 

_Dakota Territory, just before dawn_

 

“I’m sorry,” Dan mumbled, his mouth open against Nat’s hand, his eyes downcast, half closed. He was fairly trembling against his friend’s skin. “Didn’t mean it, Nat.”

All the violence had ebbed from Nat and the two of them were left in a blank and starry silence. Nat reached out and stroked Dan’s head; Dan’s eyes closed all the way then. How good it felt to be touched by Nat that way … it was almost unbearable. 

“Do you want me to stay then?” 

“Yes,” said Dan, before he could think, before he could breathe. His fate had been sealed long ago, on the cobbled streets of Boston, in the candlelit halls of Plumfield, out on the prairies and the plains. So many years done and always wanting, denying, running. So many deaths he’d escaped. It had to be for a reason and maybe this was the reason.

Dan could feel Nat’s gentle smile better than see it. “Then I’ll stay.” He gathered Dan’s hands in his own and gave them a reassuring squeeze. 

“You aren’t going back to Europe?”

“No. I’m not leaving you again.” _And I don’t expect you to leave me:_ Dan heard it as well as if Nat had said it aloud. There was a decisiveness in Nat’s speech that warmed Dan all over and made his tense muscles relax, his shallow breathing deepen. 

“But I’m going to need you to tell me what’s happened to you, Dan,” he went on. 

Dan groaned. “Can’t we just leave off…” 

“No,” and there was that tone again, a steel note in the soft voice. “You haven’t got to do it now. When you’re stronger, perhaps. But sometime. You know, it’s only right.” 

Dan could not disagree any more than he could hide from the implications of Nat's words. That they could have no secrets from each other meant much to Dan, although he feared it as well. He let Nat’s cool touch calm him, as he had so many times that evening. 

“When I tell you, you’ll just be off again,” Dan said. 

Nat made a frustrated sound. “I just said I  _won't,”_ he said. His voice was level as ever but Dan could feel the sigh against his own body. “I don’t care what you did. I don’t care if you lied or cheated, or stole or killed, Dan. I’m staying. Oh—!” Dan had released a little moan and shudder at Nat’s words; he couldn’t help himself. How had he known?

“So that’s it,” Nat said almost to himself. 

“You despise me,” muttered Dan. But he would hold onto Nat as long as his friend let him. He had no more stomach for this fight. 

“I _don’t_ ,” and Nat sounded positively offended. With some of his old, open credulity, he said, “Whatever you did, I’m sure they deserved it. You wouldn’t hurt anyone otherwise.”

“Wish you could have convinced the judge.”

“Judge…! Were you in jail? No, don’t — oh, Dan,” for Dan had sunk back against the thin pillows in despair. He couldn’t tell Nat about all that now. There was no room for that hollow black ache here — not yet.

“Soon,” Dan promised, exhausted. “Will you play me some music? You brought your fiddle, didn’t you?” He looked around for it.

“I brought it. It’s just outside.” Nat stood, stretching. Dan watched him longingly, fighting down the urge to pull him back, fiddle be damned. But Nat was already at the door, bringing his luggage and violin case in.

“What would you like to hear?” as he tuned up, nimble fingers finding homes all along the fine and shining wood of the instrument. It was mesmerizing.

“That piece you played at the river,” Dan said after some hesitation, “if you remember it.”

“Remember it,” laughed Nat. “Of course I do. I composed it for you.”

Something warm and golden bloomed in Dan’s chest. “For me?”

“That’s right,” Nat said, drawing the bow across the strings. Dan closed his eyes once more, listening in half a trance. The music seemed to be one with the moonlight outside and Dan felt himself rocked, not to sleep, but to some kind of enduring peace. He could hear Nat’s blossoming devotion in the warmer notes, his quiet torment in the darker ones like storm-tossed nights; a spray of sea and rain and parting; then Nat’s contentment, and his resolution that drew to a rapturous close. 

When it was over Dan drew a long and shaky sigh. 

“I should have stayed for the end before,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t. I’m sorry for that and other things.” The long silences, the shame, the walls he had built up. “All of it, Nat. I wish I had never left you. I half think I got in so much trouble because I hated myself for going away like that. I didn’t think I was worth anything anymore, but not — not because of that devil — he didn't mean anything. His life was better off ended. I did it trying to protect a friend, because,” Dan buried his face in his hands, “because he reminded me a little of you. And then I ended up in there. I never thought I would see you again or that I deserved to. It was so dark, Nat. I couldn’t even remember your music.” He choked the words out, the walls closing in … but then Nat was there, playing a snippet of it again — the light, buoyant, birdsong part, the notes that seemed to flit toward the ceiling and escape out the window.

“That’s so you won’t forget again,” said Nat.

He put away his violin carefully as ever, snapping the case closed and setting it on the bureau. Then he returned to sit at Dan’s side on the bed, leaning against the wooden headboard. Playing the piece seemed to have left something open in Nat, something that was only glimpsed when he was lost in music — but it was there now, contemplative and clear and true.

“Do you think any of us is innocent?” Nat said, almost to himself. “I drank, I smoked, I spent money that wasn’t mine. I let … I let young ladies believe … well, and I never could love them, you know.” Nat looked intently at his hand that was, miraculously, covering Dan’s rough one. “Not even Daisy. I love her like a sister. But you know,” he went on, his voice soft like the Dakota starlight, “she wasn’t you. You were all there was.”

“Since when?” Dan’s voice was choked, but he felt the warmth and strength of Nat’s hand on his own, and it compelled him to ask.

Nat laughed. “Oh, since I can remember, since I met you. I don’t have an idea what my life was like before I knew I wanted to spend it with you. I thought we would be like brothers, traveling together, making our own way. Then at Plumfield I knew us to be what Daisy and Nan called bosom friends. That wasn’t right either, though, was it?”

“No. I reckon it wasn’t.”

“I got to know that I … that I loved you, slowly. There was a time it all became clear, though. Remember when I played for those picnicking groups in Mrs. Jo’s orchard? Usually it was groups of friends, or families with children, but once it was just two people — a couple of young men, and they never touched, but I saw it in the way they looked at each other, they … they … and I knew that’s what I felt about you.”

To this Dan could conjure no word in answer, but he pressed Nat’s hand between his own so tightly that he could feel hard-used tendons shift in protest. He let go slightly, but only to graze his fingertips against the surprisingly firm callouses on Nat’s hand, thinking of Nat playing the fiddle for the two men in love and with his thoughts drifting toward Dan, toward the two of them, toward this moment. 

“Glad you told me,” he managed, and took the young man’s face in his hands. He gazed at it in awe for a moment before letting out a helpless sigh, and pressing his wide, tense mouth to Nat’s lips. He had to remind himself all the while that this was wanted — that his attentions were not, as he had thought for so long, unwelcome. He still tried for Nat’s sake to gentle his kisses, but Nat matched his ardor, wrapping his arms around Dan and pulling him into an embrace that made Dan’s heart pound dangerously.

Nat pressed Dan back onto the bed, hesitating only to cast an unintentional glance at the closed door. Then his hands were on Dan’s shirt, unbuttoning it. Everywhere Nat touched, Dan’s feverish skin erupted into gooseflesh; when Nat followed his fingers with his lips, the heat of it was unbearably intense. 

He held shakingly still under the sensations until it was too perilous to stop himself reaching for Nat, at the moment when his need reached an irrevocable peak. Time slowed, drowsing like water over smooth stones at the bottom of a clear river, and Dan lost himself in the culmination of his darkest, smoke-steeped dreams: Nat’s slight but strong form beneath his own, offered willingly to him; the whispered oaths and wordless pleas, the coarse caresses and fervent, reassuring kisses, and only the diffuse starlight to illuminate their joined skin — only the silent walls to hear their quickening and commingled breaths. Dan let himself get lost in pleasing Nat, in drawing each precious gasp and tremor from him. Everything was fire now, devouring Dan, branding his heart and body, washing over him in breathtaking waves.

Nat was openly sobbing in pleasure, and Dan pressed his mouth to the soft skin where Nat’s neck met his shoulder, trying to stifle his own groan. “ _Nat_ ,” he growled, an echo of that scared man who tried to push his love away, but now holding Nat tighter until he spent himself breathless and exhausted, his hand somehow in Nat’s damp hair, his forehead against Nat’s back, the last gasps and shudders tremoring through him. 

Nat was in no calmer a state, trembling violently in the aftermath. They looked at each other in brief, embarrassed wonderment, slowly steadying, Dan almost cradling Nat until his shivers subsided. He felt stronger than he had since he'd left Plumfield.

 

When they were dressed again and Dan was resting on his bed, deliciously tired, he was only mildly surprised to see Nat reach for his fiddle once more. “Reckon I should get used to this," he chuckled. 

Nat sent him a chastising look. “I have to, you know,” he said. 

“It suits me fine. What will you play now?”

Nat was tuning again, but Dan was gratified to see his movements less precise, less intent, langorous even. That was his fault and he couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

“It’s a little folk song I learned on the way here,” Nat said. “There was a Scotsman on the ship that took me back to the States. He sang and fiddled to make you cry. Every woman aboard was wringing out her handkerchief when he was done playing every night. This song made me think of you, though.”

He tried some notes, clear and gentle. “I have to sing,” he said apologetically. “And I don’t think I sing very well. But I practiced this one.” 

First he played a lilting melody, one that made Dan smile with its sweetness; he could imagine the Scotsman wooing the women on shipboard as the vessel skipped over the waves of the Atlantic. Then Nat began to sing, and Dan’s chest constricted. His voice held none of the confidence of his playing, but there was something in it just for Dan, something that gave his tremulous tones a quiet strength.

“The water is wide  
I cannot get o’er  
Nor have I wings with which to fly  
Give me a boat that can carry two  
And both shall row  
My love and I.”

Nat drew the bow softly across the strings as the simple tune came to an end. They sat in silence. Then there was a pattering, and Dan looked out at the lilac sky. It was raining for the first time in months, settling the restless dust and quenching the thirst of the cracked, arid plains. Nat settled back on the bed and into Dan’s arms as the rain fell on the grateful Dakota prairie, and the bluebells, in the sunrise, reached up eagerly to meet it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to my sweet friends and readers, especially the friends who followed me from A Song of Ice and Fire fandom to here, and also especially the Alcott fic readers who gave me a chance. Thank you especially to my beta [Sir_Bedevere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere), to whom I did not subject this fic lest she be too uncomfortable reading her name in a sex scene, but who read it anyway.
> 
> Also also, here's a Spotify playlist for this fic: [the prairie is parched](https://open.spotify.com/user/squashabug/playlist/0kC73UHcFJjyCMxFCPtu2v?si=6-hzzfFeQuWTAYL4hIjjzQ). It's just music that inspired me through the writing process and reminded me of Dan, Nat and both of them at different times.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't subject my usual beta reader to this. She will probably understand why.
> 
> Alcott readers: I do love Dan and Bess (and Nat and Daisy). But there's something about Nat and Dan ...


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